USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 3
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 3
USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 3
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The prophecy was fulfilled, inasmuch as she married Thorfin Karl- sefne, an Icelandic merchant of distinguished lineage, and with him visited Vinland, as the vicinity of Kjalarness and Krossaness was called. They were accompanied by three Icelandic merchants, Snorri Thorbrandson, Bjarni Grimolfson and Thorhall Gamlason. Thorwald, who had married Freydisa, a daughter of Eric the Red, was to go with them in a ship of his own. There were three ships and one hundred and forty persons in the expedition and plans were made for a per- manent settlement. Tools, provisions, livestock and other necessities were taken along. There were a number of women in the party, mar- Plym -- 2
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ried and single, and one of those who has given us an account of subse- quent troubles lays the blame to the female contingent, saying "the women were the cause of it, for those who were unmarried would injure those who were married, and hence arouse great disturbance."
The ships touched, in the spring of 1007 at Helluland, which has been identified with Newfoundland; at Markland, supposed to be Nova Scotia; and at Kjalarness, supposedly Cape Cod. At the latter place they found the keel which had been set up three years before by Thor- wald. Beyond Kjalarness extended a sandy shore of such length that it was called Furthustrand, after which the coast was much indented with coves and inlets. Further along the coast, in a sheltered bay, Karlsefne and his companies spent the first winter and had a bad time of it. With the coming of warmer weather they sailed "a long time" and arrived at a place where a river ran out from the land and through a lake to the sea. Here they started their settlement and called it Hop. From Hop they made explorations, trafficked with the natives, "fierce-looking but friendly, dark and grim-visaged, with filthy heads of hair, great eyes and broad cheeks."
Karsefne carried on a profitable barter with the Skraellings, ex- changing red cloth for valuable furs on his own terms, but when the natives wished for European weapons, he refused to give them this opportunity to become armed. The saga says "Now this was the way the Skraellings traded: they bore off their wares in their bellies, but Karlsefne and his companions had their bags and skin-wares, and so they parted." While the Iceland merchant was trading with them, his bull rushed from a thicket. The Skraellings, terrified by the sight and bellowing of the enraged beast, fled to their skin-boats and paddled off with the best speed they could make in their fright.
Some months later the Skraellings returned, supposedly on account of one of their number having been killed by the settlers. They made battle upon the Norsemen with the fury of desperation, until the fight became a panic.
It was at this point, according to the saga, that Freydisa rushed among the fleeing Norsemen, seized the sword of one of those who had been killed, and turned to meet the oncoming natives, crying out to her Norse companions: "Why do ye run, stout men, before these miserable caitiffs whom I thought ye would knock down like cattle? I ween I could fight better than any of you."
The natives regarded her as some powerful priestess, turning loose upon them the fury of the gods, as her cries and aspect were those of a fury, uttering strange incantations and fierce imprecations. The rout was stopped and the settlers were victorious.
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About this time Snorri, the first person of European parentage to see the light on American soil, was born to Gudrida.
In the third winter the Norsemen abandoned the settlement, leav- ing the record that "although the land had many good qualities, still would they be always exposed there to the fear of hostilities from the earlier inhabitants." They voyaged to Norway with a rich cargo of timber and in 1015 Karlsefne bought a great estate in Iceland, so that Snorri grew up there and his children after him. Gudrida died in an
Icelandic cloister founded by her son. Among her distinguished descendants were Thorwaldsen, the Danish sculptor. Thorlak, the grandson of Snorri, compiled a still existing code of Icelandic ecclesi- astical law, while he was a bishop, and probably committed to writing the sagas which constitute the most valuable of the records. Finn Magnusen was a descendant of the same Snorri, and rendered valuable cooperation to Professor Charles Christian Rafn who was instru- mental in preparing Antiquitates Americanae."
That there was some democracy in those early days, the saga gives testimony to the effect that Bjarni Grimolfson set out on the return trip from Vinland with Karlsefne but his ship became reduced to a sinking condition by reason of the teredo or ship worm. "They had a boat which was smeared with seal oil, for the sea-worms do not attack that." Bjarni commanded: "Since the boat cannot give room to more than half of our men, it is my counsel that lots should be drawn for those to go in the boat, for it shall not be according to rank." In this regard the decision of Bjarni was more just than is commonly practiced at the present day in an emergency. "Lots were drawn, and it fell upon Bjarni to go in the boat, and the half of his men with him."
One of those who, according to lot was to be left behind, found fault with the arrangements and Bjarni replied: "Go thou down into the boat, and I will go up into the ship, since I see that thou art so desirous to live." Places were exchanged and "it is most people's belief that Bjarni and his companions were lost in the worm-sea, for nothing was heard of them since that time."
Freydisa the First Woman Commander of Armed Forces in America -Freydisa, who had turned the tide of battle in Vinland, the first woman commander of armed forces in America, planned to return to Vinland, and induced two of her brothers, Helgi and Finnbogi, each to take thirty fighting men, and she an equal number, including her hus- band, Thorwald. The two brothers had the faster boats and reached Vinland in advance, storing their goods in Leif's booths. Upon her arrival she demanded that the goods be moved and enforced her com- mand by producing thirty-five fighting men, five more than the num-
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ber agreed upon for each of the trio. There were some altercations and one night, after Helgi and Finnbogi and their followers had called it a day and lain down to sleep, they were attacked by the woman and her thirty-five guards. All the men were put to death but the five women who had accompanied them from Iceland were spared by the guards who refused to obey the orders of Freydisa to despatch them. So Freydisa seized an axe and "did not stop till they were all dead." Speaking to her men, she said: "If it be permitted us to come again to Greenland, I will take the life of that man who tells of this busi- ness." In the following spring they returned to Greenland.
Other voyages to Vinland took place, and it is supposed that there were regular settlements, and even regular trade with Greenland and Iceland; but in time all knowledge of the new country was lost.
It would be especially interesting locally if we knew whether the claim that Kjalarness was Cape Cod and Krossaness, Gurnet Point or Allerton, were true, and whether Snorri was born so near the birth- place of Peregrine White, and whether Plymouth or Barnstable County, as we know them, was the setting for the strenuous performances of the fighting Freydisa.
Krossaness, the place of Thorwald's death and grave, has been as- sociated with Point Allerton by Rafn, although he leans more towards Gurnet Point, at the end of Duxbury Beach, as does Dr. Kohl in his "Discovery of Maine;" and Bryant in his "Popular History of the United States." The French translation of Wheaton's "History of the Northmen," made by Paul Guillot, and sanctioned by Mr. Wheaton, leans also toward this view.
The essential facts are that the discovery and brief occupation of America by the Norsemen have not been discredited, and the more the subject is illuminated, the stronger becomes the corroboration of the general trustworthiness of the sagas. Some investigators have re- garded seriously the similarity of Indian and Norse names of places, evidence furnished by supposed remains of the Norsemen still extant in this vicinity. Perhaps it is more conservative to agree with those who say no vestiges of the visits of the Norsemen remain. The Old Mill at Newport has often been cited as a true Norse memorial. The idea of a Norse origin for the Dighton Rock inscriptions was accepted by many scholars as positive proofs but, since the finding of numerous rock inscriptions of undoubted Indian origin, the idea has been gen- erally given up. Much study leads to much confusion along this line, as in many other historical paths, and one might as well try to scatter all doubts as to whether there was a William Tell, or try to prove who struck Billy Patterson, or how old is Ann.
Since the Old Mill at Newport has been put in evidence, we recall
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that Benedict Arnold who succeeded Roger Williams as governor of Rhode Island in 1657 and died in 1678, in his will, made the year of his death, speaks of the monument in question as "my stone-built wind- mill." Governor Arnold's family came from Warwickshire, England, in which Leamington is located. He had a Rhode Island farm which he called Leamington Farm. Three miles from the English Leamington in Chesterton is a round stone windmill, which much resembles the one in Newport. It is believed that the Newport mill was copied from the one in Chesterton which Governor Arnold had seen many times in his boyhood.
As for Dighton Rock, lying on the bank of Taunton River, in Berkley, Massachusetts, learned Danes easily read on its surface "Thorfin" and "CXXXI." It was claimed that this inscription proclaimed that Thorfin and one hundred and thirty-one men occupied this vicinity. Others, not possessed of Scandinavian fervor, see in the rude human figures and those of animals on the rock figures carved by the Indians.
Parts of a well-preserved skeleton were found with armor, consisting of a breastplate and a belt of brass tubes linked together in a peculiar manner, in 1831, near Fall River, Massachusetts. Armlets and anklets made in the same manner and brass arrowheads were also found. Long- fellow found in the discovery, the story of "The Skeleton in Armor,"' and he linked it with the Old Stone Mill or Round Tower at Newport.
Three weeks we westward bore, And when the storm was o'er, Cloud-like we saw the shore Stretching to leeward;
There for my lady's bower Built I the lofty tower Which to this very hour, Stands looking seaward.
Even the genius of Longfellow could not perpetuate the fancy. The skeleton was evidently neither that of an Indian nor a Norseman and probably Benedict Arnold, governor of Rhode Island, not the Revolu- tionary war general of unsavory fame, and not a Viking erected the Old Mill at Newport, as the language in his will indicates.
The Norsemen might, however, have been early settlers in Plymouth County on Cape Cod and still not have built the Old Mill, written inscrip- tions on Dighton Rock or left a skeleton in armor. The value of various things offered in evidence neither proves nor denies the identifi- cations of the sagas. Professor Rafn had no hesitation in naming the island of Nantucket as the one on which Leif the Lucky landed, or in identifying Vinland with Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The site of Leif's booths he places at Bristol, Rhode Island, and speaks of "the
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precise spot where the ancient Northmen held their intercourse." M. Gravier gives no information about the skeleton in armor, found near Fall River, placed in a museum there and subsequently destroyed by fire, but he concluded that other skeletons found near by were those of the victims of Freydisa !
The sagas themselves do not settle the question whether we are treading the historical sands of Vinland. We may never be able to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that any distinct spot was settled by the Norsemen. Years ago, when the Boston statue to Leif Ericson was projected, the members of the Massachusetts Historical Society discouraged it on the ground that there was only questionable testi- mony that the Norsemen ever came to New England. There are vari- ous other statues of Leif Ericson in the United States, models of heroic grace and beauty, looking every inch the explorer and navigator whose ship coasted down the shores of Newfoundland long before Columbus raised the flag of Spain on San Salvador. One such statue is in Mil- waukee, Wisconsin, more than a thousand miles from the one in Boston. The student is prone to believe, in trying to follow in the footsteps of the Norsemen, that not for nothing did they name one of their settlements Hop, and is inclined to leave the mystery of the loca- tion of Vinland as he found it, lest he "out of too much learning become mad."
Early Adventurers and Discoverers-Whether Rafn's map of Vin- land, boldly placing the name Kjalarness at the tip of Cape Cod, Kros- saness on Gurnet Point, Furthustrand on the outer shore, somewhere between Orleans and Truro, Hop near Bristol, Rhode Island, and giving other definite locations to Leifsbudir and Furdustrand and Straumsey, other places mentioned in the saga, is correct, does not make it less interesting to try to find out what manner of people were among these hills and valleys and navigating the numerous lakes and streams before the Pilgrims landed. When pre-Pilgrim history is inquired about it is popularly disposed of in the word "Indians," as if the copper- colored people of the forests dated back to the time when "The morn- ing stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy." We submit that it is in no way a reflection upon the glory of the Pilgrims that they were not the first mortals to inhabit the land into which they breathed the spirit of liberty. Neither does it in any way dim the lustre of the diadem of Christopher Columbus to tell the stories of the discoverers before him, even though there is much of maze and myth in the narratives. A brief reference to such claims as have not been proven false but are accepted by respected authorities has its legitimate place in a work of the nature of this one.
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Ante-Columbian discoveries and the giving of a new world to the Old have been claimed by almost every race of eastern Asia, by the Normans, Welsh and Irish as well as the Scandinavians and Italians, and they offer evidence of varying worth. With all such claims, un- less they have some reference to the little grain of the earth's surface constituting the southeastern counties of Massachusetts, we have nothing to do. We easily believe that there was something going on hereabouts before the Indian war-whoop awoke the echoes, and a natural curiosity asks what it was. Were they a superior and mys- terious race that vanished before the occupancy of the land by the red men whom Columbus found at San Salvador and Myles Standish found on Cape Cod and at Plymouth? We do not know and, as an eminent historian has said, "no longer does anyone try to write a complete history of America from the sources, and each man now assumes that he may begin on the foundations laid by somebody else."
We know that there was a time when there were no Great Lakes, no Niagara Falls, and Mount Washington was wholly or mostly sub- merged beneath the Titanic labors of the mighty glacial rivers which came down from "Greenland's Icy Mountains," or some other place equally as cold and forlorn. There is evidence that the Mohawk Valley was filled nearly to the height of the Catskills and some of the geological formations were moved 600 miles or more in the upheaval. Possibly some of the stone relics which were found in this territory were borne from far away by the glacial drift, but from these relics are deduced some knowledge of the arts and culture of those who made them and the reasons for which they were made.
Among the early European voyagers in Massachusetts Bay was probably Jean Allefonsce, and some historians give to him the honor of being its discoverer.
Captain John Smith-It is not clear when the name Massachusetts was first applied to the bay. It was in 1614 that Captain John Smith sailed along the Massachusetts coast and Smith's map was the first to show the outline so as to be recognized. The headlands of Cape Cod had attracted attention from the beginning of explorations.
Bartholomew Gosnold-Bartholomew Gosnold and his crew were the first English positively known to have landed on Massachusetts soil. It was he that named Cape Cod, having been surprised at a large catch of fish made by his crew. Gosnold's landing was in 1602.
Pring, Weymouth, Dermer, Hudson, and Others-Captain Pring the next year, 1603, landed somewhere in the bay and, according to De- Costa, at Plymouth.
Another English captain, Weymouth, struck the coast of Cape Cod
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in 1605, having sailed from England in May of that year, under the patronage of the Earl of Southampton.
The French records come in at this point. Henry IV gave to De- Mont in 1603, a patent of LaCadie, in a country lying between forty and forty-six degrees north latitude. Plymouth County is in latitude forty-two degrees. DeMont made an expedition for exploration in 1605, with Champlain as pilot. After landing at Cape Ann and Boston, they skirted the shore past Brant Rock in Marshfield, and Plymouth, and rounded Cape Cod. They had a skirmish with the natives and turned back.
The next year Champlain came back with Poutrincourt, entered the harbor of Barnstable, proceeded around Cape Cod to the entrance of Vineyard Sound, returned and never again visited these shores. A narrative of his explorations was published in 1613, accompanied by two maps.
In 1609 Henry Hudson landed at Cape Cod on his way to explore the river which bears his name.
In March, 1614, Captain Smith left England on a trading expedi- tion, landed near the Penobscot River in Maine, left his vessels to fish and trade, and, accompanied by eight men, started to map out the bay. He reported that he "sounded about twenty-five excellent good harbors." He also made a draft of Cape Cod and then rejoined his vessels. He next engaged in a project for settling the country which he gave the name New England. Of it he said: "Of all the parts of the world I have yet seen not inhabited, I would rather live here than anywhere." To further his colonization scheme, Captain Smith set sail from England in March, 1615, with two ships, one commanded by Thomas Dermer. The latter reached the coast but Smith's ship was disabled in a storm and forced to return. After refitting he again set sail in June, but was captured by a French cruiser and for a time held as a prisoner. While thus held, he wrote a narrative of his first voyage which was published in London in 1616 as "A Description of New England; or the Observations and Discoveries of Captain John Smith." It was accompanied by a folding map of New England, from Penobscot Bay to Cape Cod, and, with this publication of eighty pages, he sought to organize a company of colonists. He met with no immediate success but his book served to pave the way for the establishment of the English permanently in Massachusetts. Smith in the text of his book referred to "the high mountaine of Massachusetts," which he called "Massachusetts Mount," and which is Big Blue Hill in Milton, on the top of which the weather observatory is located.
Five years after Henry Hudson came upon Cape Cod and after the settlements of the Dutch at Manhattan, in the spring of 1614, Adrian
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Block sailed in the yacht "Restless" for an exploration of the shore and rivers of Connecticut, passed Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, the southern point of the Cape Cod peninsula, the easterly highlands on the back of the cape, rounded the cape itself, named it Cape Bevechier, passed into the bay, passed by Barnstable, stopped at Plymouth, which he called Crane Bay, and made the northerly limit of the Dutch claim at Nahant.
The map shows a passage near where the present Cape Cod Canal is located and Captain Cyprian Southach, in his chart of the "Sea of New England" also cuts off Cape Cod from the mainland and in his text says : "The place where I came through with a whale boat, being ordered by ye government to look after ye Pirate Ship Whido Bellame, command, cast away ye 26 of April, 1717, where I buried one hundred and two men drowned." There is a similar passage shown in "The English Pilot," published in London in 1794.
Thomas Dermer who sailed from England with Captain John Smith a few years before, was on the coast again in 1620, five or six months before the Pilgrims landed. The Pilgrims had declined, while in Hol- land, to accept the offers of the Dutch and settle in New Netherland. It is believed they knew Smith's map and, although exiles, had Eng- lish sympathies. Among them were some men who had previously been on the coast in fishing vessels and, when they sighted the high- lands of Cape Cod may have known they were in what Hudson had called New Holland.
Attempt to Plant English Colony in Cuttyhunk Before Virginia- The events narrated in the foregoing chapters preceded the coming of the Pilgrims, and furnish a background for the more familiar historical stories which have been taught in all the school histories since the school system was inaugurated in this country. How long before the coming of the Pilgrims the outstretched arm of Cape Cod was placed there as a haven of safety and the overlapping stretches of land forming Duxbury Beach from the north and Plymouth Beach from the south created an inner harbor of refuge, no one knows. The stage was set for the Pilgrims on "a stern and rock-bound coast" but it was not the same formation, with granite ledges and massive boulders such as make up the North Shore of Massachusetts and the coast of Maine. Rather were the rocks themselves wrapped about with sand which seemed to soften the shock of contact and make the landing a matter of safer negotiation. There was a time when gigantic animals, great flying beasts, high hulks of flesh like overgrown elephants or hide- ous rhinoceros, colossal lizards and all kinds of uncanny breathing and crawling things roamed over the territory to the north of us and, perhaps, over what is now Plymouth County. But these things had
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their day and passed away. The temperature of the polar regions ex- perienced a change. Melting snows changed to solid masses of ice. The huge animals were driven southward and plants died. The snow and ice became hundreds, perhaps thousands of feet thick and crept slowly southward like a white shadow from Greenland, from which legendary evidence is to the effect that the Norsemen came at a later period. Great rocks were torn from the cliffs and carried along or ground to powder. The rocks and detritus heaped up in ridges along the sides or traveled the whole distance and became the terminal mo- raines with which we are familiar. The stone walls which enclose the farms and fields in Plymouth County are mostly composed of relics of the glaciers, waifs of the ice age left on our doorstep. Numerous are the jumbled rock fragments stolen from the north which help form the rock-ribbed hills which greeted the Pilgrims, and over which traveled the Indians of the early seventeenth century.
Following upon the heels of Bartholomew Gosnold, one of Sir Wal- ter Raleigh's old captains, who sailed from England with thirty-two persons, cast anchor off the end of Cape Cod, which he named, coasted in the track of Leif the Lucky, if you please, landed on Cuttyhunk, one of the Elizabeth Islands, came Captain Jones of the "Mayflower." It was in May, 1602, that Gosnold made the first English footprints on the New England. He had left England in March with the definite intention of planting a colony in the New World. His old master, Walter Raleigh, was a prisoner in the Tower of London. He built a fort or storehouse on a little island in a little lake on the island of Cuttyhunk, and the site of this little fort is marked today with a monu- ment to his memory. When the time came to return to England, the supplies were so scant, with winter coming on, that none of the party were willing to remain behind and keep house while the others returned to England for more provisions and more colonists. So all returned and the plan of colonizing was sold to the English people but not the climate and hazards of New England. So Gosnold's colonizing was done be- neath the kinder skies of Virginia. Plymouth Rock, instead of the little island in the little lake of Cuttyhunk, was destined to become the American shrine of liberty.
Gosnold had been in such a hurry to start his colony that, on his voyage to Cuttyhunk, he passed by Massachusetts Bay and the shelter- ing side of Cape Cod; otherwise possibly the protection of the strange formation might have caused him to have become the founder of Plymouth County, and less high standards and less worthy reasons for colonization might have entered into the warp and woof from which was spun the mantle of New England civilization.
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